Providing high quality service robots for commercial settings, such as consumer stores, malls, and shopping centers, has been a significant challenge within the industry. This challenge is due in part to the need for the robot to interact with human beings and interface with the commercial environment, which is often not design for robotic applications. In terms of customer service, to be successful, robots must be capable of communicating with shoppers, providing information to shoppers, and leading shoppers to specific locations in a store, all while ensuring that shoppers are not negatively affected by the robot's presence. It can also be a challenge for the robot to physically operate within the commercial environment. The aisles, displays, and environment of a store are designed for human satisfaction and commercial success, not for robotic interaction. As such, the robot must be able to succeed with its given task using the existing features of stores designed for human beings.
Beyond customer service, there are numerous duties required in commercial settings which are conventionally handled by human beings. One of these duties is the constant need for conducting inventory of the products within a store. Store employees often can spend countless hours assessing the inventory of a store by going aisle to aisle and correlating products to written records; jobs that robots have been conventionally unable to perform. There are many types of known service robots; however, such robots are not well-suited for customer service or adaptive inventory management service purposes, and thus are generally inefficient, unproductive, unattractive and otherwise less than desirable. Furthermore, when a robot is successfully implemented in a commercial facility, the initial costs and the daily operational costs can be significant, so it is necessary for the robot to be capable of performing as many tasks as possible.
Thus, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the industry to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.